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and 





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Ch. II.] 



PYTHAGOREAN SYSTEM. 



19 



length become 



subject to violent movements, have at 



stationary and immovable, as Delos, and the Cyanean 



Tsles.* 



16. Volcanic vents shift their position ; there was a time 

 when Etna was not a burning mountain, and the time will 

 come when it will cease to burn. Whether it be that some 

 caverns become closed up by the movements of the earth, 

 and others opened, or whether the fuel is finally exhausted, 



&c. &c. 



The various causes of change in the inanimate world 



having been thus enumerated, those of the animate creation 



are next alluded to. The metamorphoses of insects and frogs 



are mentioned, and some popular notions respecting other 



changes in the organic world, snch as the springing up of 



the phoenix from the ashes of its parent ; but none of the 



facts or fables have any geological bearing, unless we consider 



the alleged generation of bees and wasps from the putrid 



carcases of dead cattle and horses, and the originating of 



snakes from the marrow of the human spine in sepulchres, as 



implying the adoption of the doctrine of equivocal generation. 



The transmigration of souls into the bodies of animals is re- 



Numa 



But 



Romans 



fixed ideas respecting a general change of species having oc- 

 curred in the past history of the globe, still less that there had 

 been a progressive development of life from the low r est to the 

 highest grades of organisation. Xenophanes, a Colophonian 

 who lived B.C. 535, spoke of shells, fishes, and seals which had 



come dried in mud 



and on the 



tops of the highest mountains. Aristotle, in his treatise on 

 respiration, speaks distinctly of fossil fishes ; and his pupil 

 Theophrastus, alluding to such fishes found near Heraclea, 

 in Pontus, and in Paphlagonia, says, that they were either 

 procreated from fish- spawn left behind in the earth, or had 



Raspe, in a learned and judicious tionary, originated in the great change 



essay (De Novis Insulis, cap. 19), has 

 made it appear extremely probable that 

 all the traditions of certain islands in 

 the Mediterranean having at some 

 former time frequently shifted their 

 positions, and at length become sta- 



produced in their form by earthquakes 

 and submarine eruptions, of which there 

 have been modern examples in the new 

 islands raised in the time of history. 

 When the series of convulsions ended, 

 the island was said to become fixed. 



c 2 



